


tomorrow there'll be more of us

by terafonne (fonn)



Series: The Wandering Muse [2]
Category: The Wandering Inn - pirateaba
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Celum, Chapter 5.48G, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 09:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17322032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fonn/pseuds/terafonne
Summary: Erin Solstice lives in Liscor and runs a Magical Inn with a teleporting door and hires Hobgoblins. Of course Erin Solstice would be crazy enough to go against a human army for Goblins. Tyrion planned for that. He didn't plan for everything else.





	tomorrow there'll be more of us

**Author's Note:**

> so i've seen a bunch of "erin will definitely stop tyrion and protect the goblins" but... you know what would be worse for his plan? if it wasn't just one crazy human girl  
> -this fic operates on the premise that a) rags' tribe was able to lose Lord Pellmia, and b) celum has been immunized enough to goblins/Erin Things™ to go with the flow and ignore it, like the bystander effect but reversed so that no one bothers objecting. it is also lightly implied that tyrion veltras' plan is to herd the goblins into attacking liscor and destablizing the drake/human border but that is not outright stated because i'm only speculating on pirate's plot and i've seen several other decent theories.

"Goblins! Goblins from the north!"

Rags heard and dismissed the panicked shouts of the Guardsmen in the human city. They had a slight lead on the trailing human army ever since she had spared the one who had killed Twofeather, but it wasn't nearly enough to lose them. Besides, her tribe was exhausted after four days of travel. That was why they were traveling so close to the city, on the roads, rather than struggling through the increasingly rocky and hilly terrain.

She had no plan to attack these humans; they had nothing to worry about. The tribe, on the other hand, had to watch for arrows or thrown rocks. Even poorly aimed, in enough numbers it could be devastating. That had been her strategy, before the humans cheated. But here the goblins could not retaliate, or the humans behind would swoop in with their knights and mages. They could only run.

"-voke them, look at their numbers, just give me a second to talk to them, alright? Excuse me!" said a guard, waving his hand at the weary caravan. The goblins stopped. They stared at the man. Something about him made them want to pay attention. His armor seemed a little shinier. He stood a little taller. His voice, smooth and deep, carried clearly without shouting. "Do the words 'Redfang' or 'Erin Solstice' mean anything to you?"

A ripple went through the tribe. Rags exchanged looks with her lieutenants. Many humans likely knew of Garen Redfang, especially in this area near the High Passes where the Redfang Tribe had lived. But Erin Solstice, if this was an Erin Thing, well, the original Flooded Water Tribe had passed on the information of the _warm food place_ that provided _burning smoking death weapons_ , but goblins had no reason to recall the names of humans, and anyway none of them that had met Erin had survived the many trials that the Flooded Waters tribe had suffered since.

_Redscar, Pyrite, follow. Rest of you, keep moving._

Rags nudged her wolf towards the city.

"Redfang Tribe is part of Flooded Waters Tribe now. I am Chieftain. I know Erin." She didn't say, We are friends. She taught me chess. Even with her genius at the human language, even if the guard understood Goblin, Rags could not find the words to describe all the emotions churning under her skin. Four days of hard travel had left bone-deep weariness in her every breath, but now, the young chieftain felt only the prickling sensation of hyperawareness, the weight of the importance of this moment.

She said, "Why?"

\--

The guardsman told them a story. It was a story about heroes. It had monsters, and goats, and monster goats. It had warriors emerging triumphant from the dark to find warm beds and good food. It had cities putting themselves together, and grief for the fallen.

Some of the words and concepts he used weren't familiar with the goblins, and the story might have been lost. But the guardsman wasn't just a [Guard]. He was an [Actor]. He lived to tell stories. And the goblins were a willing audience. They listened, and understood.

\--

During the Battle of Liscor, many mages sent [Messages] back and forth, in such volumes it was like shouting. The event happening at Celum was not a battle, but for those who had the sense of such things, it, too, was quite loud. A certain individual, for example, grumbled about interrupted naps and went to find an Eater Goat to roast; all that talk about logistics and mana supply calculations made him quite peckish.

\--

The people in Celum did not have quite the experience that the people of Liscor did, but they were the second most experienced city in a certain brand of insanity. Sure, some people shouted about goblins outside the walls, but there had been goblins outside the walls yesterday, with adventurers, Gold-Rank ones, even. It was quiet, so they weren't attacking, and if they were, well that was what the door to Liscor was for. Look, they were taking that same magic door through the streets, same as before. So it was that with thousands of Goblins outside the walls there was mostly only one person making a fuss.

"Hey! Hey hey hey hey, you can't just take my door, that's private property I'll have you know, I have Gold-rank adventurers that need to come through and stock up, Gold-rank! And did Erin give you permission for this? Because if she didn't then she can just cut the magic on that door you know, stealing it on this side doesn't work, not that you should steal it from the other side either, not that you could." Octavia scrambled to keep up with the guards marching down the street with her– Erin's door.

"You! Wesle! Tell them they can't just take my- the door..." She trailed off, her many and varied arguments outnumbered by the many, many, many more goblins.

"Don't worry, Miss Octavia. It's only temporary. These are some of Miss Erin's, ah, friends. They're not part of the Goblin Lord army or anything like that." Wesle reassured her, explaining their link to the five Redfangs Erin had hired. Liscor Floodplains were in the wet season now, so he offered them the door, except that marching several thousand goblins through the streets of Celum might be cause for riots and panicking and mobs and other not profit friendly messes so of course she wouldn't begrudge them borrowing the magic door for a bit, would she?

Octavia nodded in all the right places and let him return to coordinating the mess. She thought about returning to her workshop, where she needed to finish restocking the shelves, unpacking the new vials she had ordered, catch up on the work she skipped the day before, with the baseball games. She looked down at the healing potion she had been holding when she followed the guards.

She looked at the goblins, milling around, chattering to each other, sitting on the grass, waiting their turn to funnel in through the door like grains of sand. She saw how thin they were, compared to the five Hobgoblins she'd grown used to. She saw the burns and scrapes that had just started scabbing over. She saw how the smaller goblins — the children — how they played, tossing shiny bits of rock at each other.

Octavia blinked. Those weren't rocks, they were coins! She looked at the potion she was still holding, thought about the supplies of stamina and healing potions in her shop, and went to find some help.

"Hey, Wesle. Can I borrow these people okay thanks. You two, come with me."

\--

Pyrite chewed on some flowers and watched the dark girl leave in a hurry. He was supposed to be helping the guardsmen keep the tribe moving, but goblins understood moving quite well and needed little aid. He swallowed the flowers. Which was why those men had been allowed to go with the girl.

Pyrite found some weeds with particularly large and crunchy roots. He chewed. He swallowed. He farted.

Eventually, the girl came back, along with several wooden crates. Curiosity piqued, Pyrite ambled over.

"What for?"

"Oh good, you can speak. I'm Octavia, the best alchemist in the city, and I'm here to offer my wares. I'm offering a special discount since I hear you're friends of Erin, and of course you'll want to buy in bulk, so let's say two gold per health potion and one gold per stamina potion? That would be sixty gold if you're taking the three batches here, which is really quite reasonable and definitely the best deal you'll find."

Pyrite stared.

The girl's smile (she was smiling at him? why?) waned a bit.

"Of course, I assumed that you could cover the cost based on your numbers, but we can talk on a smaller scale if that's necessary-"

"Healing potions?" He had only caught a few in that flurry of words, and he was pretty sure he had misunderstood the meaning.

"Oh yes, do you want to see a sample?"

Pyrite looked at the potion held out to him, at the faint glowing and vibrant color that indicated a high quality potion.

"You give healing potions? To us?"

"Well, not for free. I'll sell them to you, for gold. You understand, of course, I do still have to make a profit."

Although Pyrite had no experience with human ideas of economy or money, the concept of trading was something common to goblin tribes, trading various foods, or sleeping spots, or duties, or favors. So when he thought a little further, he knew that he had something humans wanted (although now that she was closer, he thought she might not be human, since he could see strange markings on her skin, and that she did not smell of flesh and blood and sweat but instead of cloth and herbs and strange things. Pyrite, being Pyrite, did not worry unnecessarily when he could clearly see the other humans interacting familiarly with the strange girl) and called for some of his personal items to be brought over. He pulled out a particularly large blue rock and held it so that it caught the light.

"How about this? This is good too?"

Octavia choked. "Th-That's a sapphire! You have- and the size- and- the whole bag?! Oh my threads, yes, this is very good! I think we will have an excellent business relationship."

(If Erin had been present, rather than participating in a long-awaited reunion, she would have said, for no reason any Innverse spectators could discern, "Cha-ching!")

\--

Here's the thing about herding a group much larger than your own. You need scouts to ensure that that the herding does not become merely chasing. This doesn't work so well when your group is exhausted from four days' marching at a blistering pace, largely suffering from smoke inhalation, your targets have inexplicably acquired a second wind, and also their high morale is inversely proportional to yours. Suddenly, Lord Pellmia felt quite sure he'd be losing that bet to Lord Tyrion, and yet, strangely, was not disappointed.

\--

"Wait. I don't get it. Why did you ask them if they knew me?"

Wesle shrugged. "You know a lot of goblins."

"What? You can't just assume I know all goblins just because I'm nice to them!"

"But I was right."

"That's not the point!"

"Would you rather I hadn't?"

"No, but. Guh."

"Even if they were goblins you don't know, they wouldn't stay strangers for long." Wesle waved a fish flake at Pebblesnatch in the corner, who was doing her best impression of a bottomless pit.

"Don't deny it, Miss Solstice. He is hardly incorrect."

"Ahh! Pisces, what the hell!" Erin threw her hands in the air and spun around as she smacked into thin air. "Why are you invisible? And stop stealing food, you're rich!"

"I would appreciate if you did not draw attention to me; Rags is trying to annoy me into teaching her tribe magecraft."

"That's so cool, you should do it!"

"Absolutely not."

"I'll, uh, I'll pay you? Not in coins, since you're, y'know, rich. I'll pay you in cookies."

"...Deal."

**Author's Note:**

> -deleted scenes (bc too long/can't do it justice in comparison to what pirate will do): safry and maran redemption arc, erin and rags' reunion, the five adventurer hobs redfang reunion, zavara not getting paid enough for this shit, tyrion reacts, etc.  
> -title is from hamilton  
> -please suspend your disbelief. this is not written for plausibility, it's written for wish fulfillment to make characters interact with each other.  
> -leave a comment if you liked it. thanks :)


End file.
